Rod McQueen's Blog, page 9

A modest proposal

There’s been a lot of talk about who should replace our late Queen on the $20 bill. King Charles is an obvious candidate, but let’s consider some alternatives first. We sure don’t need another former prime minister. We already have Sir Wilfrid Laurier on the $5, Mackenzie King on the $50, and Robert Borden on the $100. Queen Elizabeth is also on the $1,000 bill so there are actually two openings available, although I can’t imagine anyone other than a criminal actually having any $1,000 bills.
Former Finance Minister Bill Morneau made a brilliant choice when he selected Viola Desmond for the $10 bill, thereby picking a woman of colour who made an important statement about civil and women’s rights. In that same mode, for our $20 bill, we could go with someone like D’Arcy McGee, Canada’s first nationalist, who was assassinated for his trouble. Or Louis Riel, who fought for Metis rights. Poundmaker, the rebellious Cree leader who was recently exonerated for his treasonous ways, is another possible honouree. Or, if we sought to go totally consumer-oriented, we could use the Shopify logo, a tribute to all Canadian start-ups.
But here’s my modest proposal: Andrew Jackson. Yes, he’s on the US$20 bill, and my idea is that we seize this opportunity to ditch the C$ and embrace American currency. Think of the ease of traveling to winter vacations in Florida or Arizona using the cash already in your pocket. With our dollar valued at a paltry 73 cents U.S., our lives would be vastly improved because we’d no longer pay that one-third premium on goods coming into Canada that were priced in U.S. dollars.
Just think about the number of items we buy that are made in the U.S. or abroad that are already priced in US currency before they cross our border: fruit, vegetables, books, clothing, manufactured goods, household appliances, you name it. A currency switch to the US$ would add one-third to everyone’s purchasing power and mean your paycheque or pension goes much further. |
Such a spurt to spending would boost our economy and keep interest rates lower than they otherwise might be. Adopting the US$ would also mean that our productivity would improve from the depths of despair where it now sulks. Canadian exporters who have enjoyed a built-in advantage because of the cheap C$ would have to change their lazy ways and become more competitive.
The US$. What’s not to like?

I want to be a CEO

My name is Rod McQueen and I want to be a CEO. Not one of those home-based businesses or some tiny tech firm, I’m scaling the corporate cliffs and getting ready for the pinnacle by looking like I deserve to be there.
First, I have to assemble the appropriate accoutrements. There will be no casual Fridays, puh-leez. I plan to get myself a few Kiton suits (at $10,000 each), a raft of Brioni shirts ($800 each), and a shelf-full of Ferragamo shoes ($1,000 per pair), and then accessorize the dress-for-success wardrobe with a top-of-the-line Cartier watch costing up to $250,000. Or maybe a Bulova from Amazon.
Hats are a rarity, but they can make a man. Maybe I’ll riff off the black beret worn by Jozef Straus, founder of JDS Uniphase. In a gesture as egalitarian as it was generous, Straus bought 20,000 berets so that he could give one to anybody who asked. I’ll give away Tilley hats so that everyone on the Aegean cruise knows I’m Canadian because no one else on earth wears a silly Tilley.
And I want to be able to smoke cigars in my office like Tony Fell, former head of RBC Dominion Securities, despite the fact that the entire building was supposed to be smoke-free. Fell’s cigar of choice was the spicy Montecristo #4. I’ll smoke the #5. It sounds bigger.
But I know full well that all of those trappings pale beside the most essential characteristic of a CEO: jargon. I’ve already been practicing this line: “You’ve got to walk the walk and talk the talk.” As I understand it, the dirtiest little CEO secret is that jock talk exists specifically to keep women out of the executive suite. That’s why so many phrases CEOs use are lifted directly from team sports, hunting, and the military.
When I get to the top, I’ll use merger and acquisition terminology that’s explicitly sexual because it’s all about seduction or, if the bid is hostile, rape. When a target company allows a potential acquisitor to look at the books before making a bid, that’s called “opening the kimono,” “raising your skirts,” or “lifting the veil.” Count me in favour of all those activities.
A final note about arms and the man. If, as CEO, I remove my suit jacket at a meeting, I’m not overheated. I’m a medieval warrior removing my armour, trying to fool you into thinking that my guard is down when it’s not. In my CEO world, chivalry is long since dead. Long live the king!

 

Hooked for life

I was talking recently to a friend with whom I worked at the London Free Press. He still lives in London and told me that the Free Press building was being demolished. Demolished, I thought, it was just built in 1965. Then I thought, oops, that was fifty-eight years ago. We must have been teenagers at the time.
I was lucky enough to win the London Free Press Editorial Award as a result of writing a high school news column in Guelph, my home town. The award paid for half my tuition at what is now Western University plus $1,000 ($10,000 in today’s money), for working summers at the Free Press. The Free Press was where I began learning how to write because editors would throw stories back in my face and say things like, “This needs more interviews,” or “The lede is the in the fourth paragraph.”
The paper had four morning editions dispatched to the four corners of the compass from Windsor to Waterloo, Port Dover to Wiarton. In the evening there were two more editions, one for London home delivery, and a second “bulldog” edition with late news and closing markets. The outside four pages were pink. There were bureaus in Sarnia, Strathroy, Woodstock, and St. Thomas plus local stringers in numerous communities. There were about twenty reporters in the newsroom (all men except for Lenore Crawford who wrote about arts and culture), plus a separate department of female journalists who did stories on cooking, gardening, clubs, and crafts. That privileged white male ruling class seems terribly outdated by today’s standards.
In addition to summer work, I often worked the 5:30 p.m. to 1 a.m. shift on rewrite many evenings during the school year. There were three of us sitting at typewriters on stands, taking directions from the night news editor. I also worked on the student paper, The Gazette, where senior people would graduate thereby creating openings at the top. I started in first year by writing briefs, those one-paragraph items filling out a story at the bottom of the page. By third year, I was the managing editor. |
Hooked in high school, I soon became enthralled by the process and the product of writing. I was lucky to find my vocation so early in life. Some people never find the work that they love.

BlackBerry Down

My book on BlackBerry, published in 2010, took four years, twice as long as any other book I’d written at the time. Convincing the company to grant access was a lengthy effort. Even then, getting interviews on a timely basis was problematic. In all my years as a journalist and author, I’d never run across such a poorly organized company.
The book came out in March 2010 when the popularity of BlackBerry was at its peak with 75 million sold and a 50 percent share of the U.S. smartphone market. Another book, Losing the Signal, by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff, published in 2015, tells how that market share fell to one percent. Their book became the basis for a new movie, BlackBerry, which I saw at a Toronto preview last night. 
As for the co-CEOs of BlackBerry, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, Balsillie’s hard-nosed style is well captured; the thoughtful approach of Lazaridis less so. The movie takes a while to get rolling and then never really catches fire. Worse, the cinematic version takes real life tales and alters them for no apparent reason. At one point, for example, the two men meet with a carrier in New York. They mistakenly leave behind in a taxi the prototype they plan to show the group. Lazaridis goes to find it, leaving Balsillie, who does not know how the handheld will work, fumbling a presentation that ends with him saying, “You’re selling self-reliance.”
In real life, as related in my book, the 1997 meeting was with BellSouth executives in Atlanta. The two lost prototypes, known internally as Leapfrog, were retrieved from the taxi. Made of wood, each measured about 2×3 inches, had a plastic “screen” with half a dozen printed lines listing emails. The keyboard was pasted on with “keys” in an arc, and there was a pretend thumbwheel on the side. Despite this simplistic offering, so smitten were these grown men that they excitedly waited their turn as they passed around what was little more than a dressed-up child’s toy. Why alter a lively story that set in motion an early order for what became the BlackBerry?
Balsillie attended the preview and participated in a question-and-answer session after the movie was shown. He took issue with some of the film’s interpretations but admitted he was happy to be in the limelight no matter what the cinematographers had done. While I admire his pluck, I can’t say that I recommend the movie.

The King and I

When Elizabeth II died last September, I declared in this space that I was a monarchist. My fealty continues to her son and heir, Charles III. I thought that once Her Highness died, there would be a groundswell of acrimonious debate in Canada about ending our links to the Royal Family. But even as Coronation Day approaches next week, on May 6, there has hardly been a peep on the topic until a recent Angus Reid poll showed that 60 percent of Canadians are against recognizing Charles as King. A bare majority, 52 percent, don’t want Canada to continue as a constitutional monarchy. Still, whatever the numbers, any public protest has been puny.
Charles certainly has had a sufficient apprenticeship for the job, spending 64 years as Prince of Wales and heir apparent. The previous record-holder of the title, Prince of Wales, became Edward VII in 1901 after 60 years in the saddle. I visit “Bertie,” as he was known during his lifetime, in his current saddle – an equestrian statue – in Queen’s Park on my regular walks. I always offer a military salute, or as much as I can muster as a civilian who never served except as an army cadet for two years in high school.
Charles has unquestionably paid attention to Canada over the years. He first visited in 1970 and has been seventeen times since including more trips to northern Canada than very few of us citizens ever make.
I have a related Royal worry. A statue of Elizabeth II that has been in storage for six years will soon be unveiled in a prize location in front of the Ontario Legislature. According to an article in the Globe and Mail, the statue and its pedestal are seven metres tall and the whole thing will sit on a three-metre granite plinth that will mean the total installation will rise ten metres. That’s more than thirty feet, or the equivalent of about three floors in an office building.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote to the man in charge of the grounds, the Honourable Ted Arnott, speaker of the Legislative Assembly, expressing my concern that the whole contrivance could look monstrous and totally out of proportion to all of the other statues. I await his reply. After all, someone’s got to defend the memory of our Queen.

The strange silence of songbirds

Think about the number of songs with the names of American cities in the title. I’m sure I could cite one from every state: New York, New York, I Left my Heart in San Francisco, Wichita Lineman, By the Time I Get to Phoenix, Tallahassee Lassie, Viva Las Vegas, Streets of Laredo, Hollywood Nights, Philadelphia Freedom, Chicago, Do You Know the Way to San Jose. You get the idea. Even a mere spot on the American map merits a mention. Jackson Browne wrote the first line, “Well, I’m standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona,” Glenn Frey finished the rest, and Take it Easy became a big hit for The Eagles.
Compare that with Canada where I can count the number of song titles containing Canadian cities on the fingers of one hand: Sudbury Saturday Night, by Stompin’ Tom Connors, Runnin’ Back to Saskatoon by The Guess Who, and Bobcaygeon by The Tragically Hip. Even one of Canada’s most prolific songwriters, Gordon Lightfoot, gave us only one song with a Canadian place name, Alberta Bound. To get the list all the way up to my fifth finger I have to include Helpless, by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young where Neil Young managed to sneak the words “There is a town in North Ontario” into the lyrics.
The list of Canadian singers without a Canadian place name in any of their top songs is lengthy: Shania Twain, Celine Dion, Micheal Bublé, Nickelback, k.d. lang, Blue Rodeo, Hank Snow, Leonard Cohen, The Weeknd, Diana Krall, and Bachman-Turner Overdrive. Even our most famous songbird, Anne Murray is silent on Canadian cities. As if to prove my point, the most recent Canadian songster to gain fame in the U.S., William Prince, has done a duet with Willie Nelson and appeared on the Grand Ole Opry in February. There are no Canadian cities in his titles. 
Is this some sort of conspiracy? An oversight? My suspicion is that they don’t want to tempt fate in the U.S. market by singing about some Canadian city that the Americans never heard of. I can almost understand that way of thinking for someone early in their career, but once established, you’d think they’d feel a little freer to celebrate their home country without fretting they’d suddenly be ditched by American fans.
Or maybe they’re representing Canadians exactly the way we are, hiding under a huge inferiority complex. The most we can muster to Americans is, “We’re different from you.” Why don’t we say we’re the same as you, only better? Why not strive to be foremost? That would be the best song of all.  

Offside!

David Johnston, the former governor general, has a new book out called Empathy. Empathy, by his definition, is knowing someone’s need and stepping in to help. The book shines when Johnston reveals personal anecdotes. Early in the book, for example, he talks about his prowess as young hockey player. A Junior A scout came to his house, gave Johnston’s mother his hat, and she planned to make tea. The scout’s opening line was how, if Johnston played Junior A, he would not graduate high school because all his time would be spent on the sport.
Johnston’s mother quickly returned the scout’s hat and he was out the door. Johnston later attended Harvard on a three-quarter scholarship, graduated magna cum laude, went to Cambridge, and was head of two Canadian universities. He was forever grateful for his mother’s intervention. Johnston also is open about how much he has learned from his wife, Sharon, and their five daughters.
However, some of his recommendations about how empathy should become part of our lives are banal. He says we should follow The Golden Rule. Wow. He also says we should say hello to strangers and wave at bicyclists as they pass by. Both of those greetings might work on a quiet street in a rural village but not too well in large cities. And, oh by the way, he admits maybe it wouldn’t work for women.
But the most galling parts of the book are the best written by ghostwriter Brian Hanington. Johnston calls him a “magician” with words. And indeed he is. But some of his passages have no relevance to the topic at hand. One tale describes how writer-director George Lucas’s work on American Graffiti and Star Wars is all about community involvement, a stretch if there ever was one.
Johnston has recently been on the carpet for other reasons. When Justin Trudeau named him as rapporteur to investigate foreign influence in recent federal elections, I thought it was an excellent choice until I learned he and Justin are good friends and neighbours at their respective cottages in the Laurentians. I did not know he was on the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation until he resigned. That had provided another point of harmony with the prime minister. Can Johnston really keep all that at bay when he writes his report? Johnston’s name used to be pristine. His new book won’t help on the road to redemption.

A life lives on

In all the shuffling involving Onex Corp. and RBC Wealth Management, an important element is getting lost. The name of the former investment firm, Gluskin Sheff + Associates, is disappearing even though it’s at the heart of this deal. Onex bought Gluskin Sheff from the founders, Ira Gluskin and Gerry Sheff, for $445 million in 2019 and made the team of financial advisors part of Onex.
That deal didn’t last long. Four of the Gluskin, Sheff stalwarts were recently preparing to move to RBC. Rather than let them go, Onex decided all of the forty-one people at the firm should be allowed to go to RBC. Are you with me so far? Then, in the most inexplicable part of the whole transaction, according to the Globe and Mail, Onex said RBC didn’t have to pay anything for picking up the entire crew. How this make sense I do not know.
My real point about this is that I want to salute Ira and Gerry, who have long since retired. I never met Sheff, but I did interview Ira Gluskin a few times and he was one of the oddest and brainiest people I’ve ever interviewed. I was ushered into a boardroom for one of our sessions so I took the seat to the immediate left of the head of the table. I assumed Gluskin would take the top chair. Instead, he walked down the other side of the table and chose the last seat of a dozen about ten meters from me.
As if that weren’t crazy enough, he slid down so far I could barely see his curly-haired and bespectacled head above the table. He was, however, articulate, and enjoyed making wry remarks about specific players on Bay Street as well as the business community in general.|
But such views will not be his main legacy. Instead it will be the philanthropy of Gluskin and his wife, Maxine Granovsky Gluskin. Their first major donation was for the 1994 showing of French impressionists at the Art Gallery of Ontario from the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Their gift was a reputed $1 million. The couple has since made bequests to the University of Toronto, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the United Way, among many others. So Ira, I’m sorry to see the fabled firm’s name disappearing, but your name will live on in the community. And I’m sure that’s how you’d rather have it.

Chaos and disorder

It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times. Everywhere you turn these days the world seems to be coming apart at the seams. Climate change, global warming and greenhouse gases are causing flooding in Africa, ten feet of snow in California, Colorado lows, and tornadoes touching down whenever and wherever they want.
In the cities, everything seems to be coming asunder. Toronto is now more congested than New York, meth addicts are all too visible on the streets, and a gang of girls as young as thirteen swarm and beat a homeless man minding his own business on a bench. 
A retired and beloved CBC employee is randomly shoved on the Danforth and dies. Women are beaten on the streets or pushed in front of subway trains. Persons unknown demand Canada Goose coats off the backs of their owners. 
There are no longer any rules of the road. Drivers, three at a time, zoom through red lights rather than wait two more minutes for their left turn. In Quebec a bus driver rams into a school. A few days later a copycat intentionally mows down pedestrians. In Vancouver, drivers and their passengers blocked from crossing a bridge because a man in the middle claims he’s ready to jump into the river below, shout at him to get on with his suicide.
A proxy war in far-off Ukraine threatens to cause a global calamity. Previously healthy banks show the frailty of the financial system by collapsing. Central banks driving up interest rates to slow inflation fail to achieve their goals while wreaking havoc on small businesses forced into bankruptcy and beleaguered families who can’t make ends meet. 
What’s the cause for all this chaos, trauma, and stress? The Covid-19 pandemic? The abandonment of churches by their flocks? Disintegration of the ties that bind?
Where is the light that shines in our darkness? Not in the hide-the-truth Justin Trudeau. Not in the dotty Joe Biden. There’s only one place left to turn. We must find the light within ourselves.

The lost cause

There’s been a lot of ink spilled in recent days about the closing of the thirteen Nordstrom stores in Canada. I feel badly for the 2,500 employees who will lose their jobs and the mall owners that have to fill the empty spaces. As a loyal Nordstrom shopper who has bought goods in U.S.-based Nordstrom stores over the years while visiting in New York, Florida, and California, no one was happier than I was when Nordstrom first arrived in Canada in 2014. 
I was well served with outlets. There was a Nordstrom in the Eaton Centre, a short subway ride away, and a Nordstrom Rack at Yonge and Bloor, a five-minute walk from where I live. But neither of them was a real Nordstrom, like I was used to. For the greater part of its existence, the menswear department at the Eaton Centre did not even carry the popular shirt I regularly bought in the U.S. Nordstrom, the Smartcare button-down. As for Nordstrom Rack, which carries good quality items in the U.S., the Toronto store did not even come close. I went there once; the stuff was universally junk. The socks felt like the cheapest from China. And staff? They were non-existent.
Separate from the off-price Nordstrom Rack, the quality of some Nordstrom items was also poor compared with other vendors in Canada. During the last year I happened to buy three pairs of pyjamas, one pair at Harry Rosen, another at Dapper Depot Menswear in Orillia (I get around!) and the third at Nordstrom. The first two stores provided good quality. The pyjamas from Nordstrom shrank in the wash.
The departure of Nordstrom has also been linked with the brief, unhappy stay in Canada of Target. I’ve read that both Nordstrom and Target were too upscale for price-conscious Canadian consumers. Such a claim is nonsense on stilts. I used to shop at Target in Cloverdale Mall in Toronto’s west end. I’d go with a list of household, paper and other products. Half the items I wanted would often be out of stock. So don’t give me any guff about how hard both Nordstrom or Target tried. We got only a half-hearted effort. Bye bye, Nordstrom, I wish it were otherwise, but I won’t miss you.